


Rinse

by woollen_pharaohs



Series: the weight of true words [1]
Category: October Faction (TV series)
Genre: Angst, Domesticity, F/F, Foreplay, Guilt, Post-Season/Series 01, mentions of past alice/omari and past dee/fred, parents to co parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:42:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22725607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woollen_pharaohs/pseuds/woollen_pharaohs
Summary: Funny how Alice was painted as this evil killer when in reality all she wanted to do was make sure her kids were warm and comfortable and bake them things. This fic is basically Alice and Dee learning how to deal with life after the events of season 1. (and omg they were co parents...)
Relationships: Alice Harlow/Deloris Allen
Series: the weight of true words [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658707
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	Rinse

**Author's Note:**

> I'm actually surprised that this is the first fanfic for the tv show? I haven't checked out the comic tag but how do you put tamara taylor and maxim roy in the same show with ultra milf energy and NOT expect a f/f fic to come out of it??

**Alice**

Alice walks into the Allen mansion covered head to toe in Edith’s blood. She can hear Kessa and Martin in the kitchen making breakfast. She can’t wait to talk to them, to hug them, to love them. There’s so much to do, so much to say, so much lost in her grief. She needs to teach her children everything. But first she needs to wash off the blood of her enemy.

She wafts to the bathroom, strips naked and pressed her back against the cold wall as she waits for her bath to draw. Just hours beforehand, her backstabbing friend had her tied up in this same bath. When she submerges herself in the hot water, Edith’s blood peels off her like old skin. The heat soothes her tired muscles and the buoyancy of the water holds her in a feather light embrace. She soaks for an hour. The scent of poached eggs and hollandaise sauce seeps through the floorboards, and through the membranes of the walls, she expects to hear Dee mourning over the loss of her husband and her beloved institution, but she’s just sitting on her bed, breathing deeply. 

Alice breathes in time. 

  
  
  


**Deloris**

Dee goes out to Fred’s grave once, by herself, and another, with Viv and Geoff, and then never again. 

Without Fred, without Presidio, and with her kids’ birth mother back, she doesn’t know what to do with herself. Monster hunting was all she ever knew how to do, all she ever wanted to do apart from sharing parenthood with Fred, and Alice changed all of that. She made her feel things she’d never considered when she was taking the lives of monsters. It wasn’t that she didn’t allow herself to feel that way, it was that questioning what she did was never an option. It never came up. Going about monster hunting the way she did was normal, at least in Presidio’s world. 

But she was young when she started and she had a chip on her shoulder. And she grew up, and still she ate the lie. She looks back now and asks herself how she let herself? How did she keep doing what she did whether it was killing monsters or blocking their powers… Viv and Geoff have a right to mistrust her. She wants to claw at her chest, wants to carve out her organs and thread her own hand up her throat because of what she did to others. 

Now that she doesn’t have to answer to Presidio, it means she also will have to find a way to make money. She can’t picture herself sitting down at a computer all day in some stuffy office, but she has to do something while the twins are finishing school. She has to do something if not to just get her out of the house. But she thinks about her mistakes always. She’s driving the twins to school and thinking about what she did. She’s making breakfast and thinking about what she did. She’s turning off her vibrator and thinking about what she did. This guilt that fills her, solidifies her blood, tightens and aches her jaw. She’ll never forget it. She’ll never be able to forgive herself. And she shouldn’t. She shouldn’t. She can only try to do better. Every day, try and do something to help. 

It starts with sharing the Allen house with Alice and the twins. Dee wants to give Viv and Geoff back to Alice completely, to step back and exit their lives altogether, but the twins don’t want that, which makes her cry. So she stays in the house, with Alice, and the twins, and they make it work, somehow. They make it work because they have to. 

**Alice**

Dee keeps saying that she robbed Alice of 17 years of parenting and when she puts it that way, Alice actually likes it better than how it had felt. It had felt like an eternity. Several lifetimes lost after she thought that her babies were burned in her old homestead. 17 years seems like nothing in comparison. 

Omari used to criticise her for being too naive, for being too trusting and forgiving. To others, trusting Edith was her first mistake but there were many others before. She forgave and trusted her students not to go out of bounds again, she trusted and encouraged otherkin to enter and even live in their safe haven. She understood where Omari’s fear stemmed from, and understood his motive to question, but it was not in her nature. Even after facing betrayals over and over again, she still wants to trust. She still wants to believe that warlock or vampire or human, that good intentions are natural and foremost, and that it is to stand until proven otherwise. 

She sees Dee pulling away, forcibly detaching herself from the kids she raised and from the life she knew, and Alice does her best to reel her back in. Those numbers that Dee throws around don’t carry any weight. What matters is now. She gets to spend time with Kessa and Martin before and after school, and after they graduate. Martin wants to learn everything there is to know about being a warlock, including the language, the history, the culture, and the limits to what they can do. Kessa wants all of that too but she also wants to go to college. Who is Alice to deny her own child her dreams?

  
  


**Deloris**

What surprises her the most is that things stay mostly the same. Yes, her husband and lover of two decades is out of her life, and the house is shared by the twins’ birth mother. But Viv and Geoff, or Kessa and Geoff, as she is learning to say, still love her. She still does their washing and makes them meals and checks over their assignments. And Alice is there too; making their beds and helping with the dishes and baking them muffins. When the twins have time, Alice teaches them the warlock language. Dee has picked up a few words, in passing. It feels wrong to utter them, but she swoons to hear the twins send each other off with a loving note in their ancient language. 

And when the twins are at school, she works on her book. It was Alice’s idea. She’s never written anything other than reports for Presidio, but Alice pointed out that if her experience is non-fiction, then she can write an autobiography too. She’s aware that it’s not very good, but it gives her something to do. And it’s helping her look at her life in a new way. Yes, she still feels guilty, but Alice has helped her see that she doesn’t have to keep it all inside. She can do something with it. She can write about what she did and expose herself and expose other hunters’ ways of thinking. Whether or not people are going to believe that there was a secret faction of monster hunters under their noses is something to consider another day, but she likes that the end product could eventually help people. She can never make what she did right, but she can at least try and help. 

  
  


**Alice**

She had to explain to Dee a number of times that she didn’t have to bow out of any room that she was occupying when Alice walked in. They are allowed to share. Maybe she was a bit harsh when she made Dee and her husband face up to what they did, so it’s her turn to show a human some compassion. Slowly, over a period of a few months, Dee has gone from bowing out of the room completely, to twitching in her seat, to lifting her face with a soft eye-crinkling smile before going back to her laptop. It’s comforting to know that someone can adjust as well as Dee has in the company of a breed of folk she murdered for decades.

Alice hears her own thoughts sometimes and knows that other warlocks must think she’s crazy. Maybe she is, but she likes to be this way. She likes to trust, to uplift, to love. And she loves Dee. She does. She wants Dee to feel loved too. 

Dee’s sitting at the kitchen table with the Allen’s silverware laid out on a long cloth, each fork and spoon and knife separated like sleek parts of a gun. She has a small pile of rags and a bottle of Silvo on the table, and is currently using an old sock to buff the Silvo off a soup spoon. Alice goes to the sink behind Dee and fills up her glass of water. 

“I used to see Maggie’s maids polish the silver, never thought I’d be sitting here doing it myself,” Dee says casually. 

Alice leans against the rim of the sink, her cool glass of water in hand and the back of Dee’s head in view. She has her silky black hair tied into a ponytail that flops over the back of her chair. The shape of her slim neck can be seen with her hair tied back like this, and the gentle slopes of her shoulders. When Omari’s soul re-attached to a 60 year old white woman, there was no question. Alice had thrown her arms around Omari in his new body, and in those few minutes she had with him, she knew they could have a life together. 

“Although, I have to say,” Dee says, laying down a gleaming spoon and picking up a dirty one, “Polishing them is almost  _ orgasmic _ .”

Alice’s laugh propels her off the sink and into a chair beside Dee, sitting together at the kitchen table like old friends. Before her lies a collection of shining silverware, looking like treasure compared to their grubby siblings. She downs the last of her water, leans over her chair to slide the glass onto the kitchen counter, then says, “You don’t strike me as the kind of woman who’s never had an orgasm.”

“Good… I think?” Dee says, a frown crinkling her brow. She glances at Alice, then pours out a blot of Silvo onto a new cloth and rubs the liquid over the dirty spoon. The smell of the chemical pervades Alice’s nostrils, blocking out any other scent. Dee adds, “I  _ have _ had orgasms. Fred and I had a very active sex life.”

Alice studies Dee’s face, watches her concentrate in covering the length of the spoon in the Silvo with one cloth and buffing it out with another.

“I think about Fred sometimes.”

Dee pauses but she doesn’t raise her eyes from her work. 

“I think about his frail body--”

Dee keeps silvering the cutlery, tilting her head when she says, “Oh, don’t let the gray hair fool you. He was far from frail.” 

A cheeky grin slashes Alice’s face. “--And then I think of Omari who was a sculpted  _ God _ . Now  _ he _ was sexy.”

“I think we just have different taste in men,” Dee states. 

Alice hums. She pulls her chair just inches closer to Dee, who doesn’t budge. “I also think of when I brought my kind back and Omari returned in a woman’s body.”

Dee puts down a now shining spoon and picks up a butter knife. “I didn’t know that.”

“No, well, he wasn’t happy with being revived in the first place,” Alice smiles sadly. “He didn’t think it was right. But if he had been okay with it, and if he had lived, I would have been with him. It wouldn’t have mattered.”

Dee doesn’t say anything. The dull knife slowly glints in the early afternoon sunlight that casts through the kitchen window. Alice lifts her hand to stroke through the length of Dee’s hair, tugging the ends that are caught between her back and chair. A stray hair comes loose in Alice’s hand and she observes the straightness of the black hair before dropping it to the ground. In the corner of the eye, she can see that Dee has lowered the knife and cloth to the table, her body stiff. Alice edges closer. 

“Don’t you feel lonely without your husband?” 

“Not really,” Dee says. She pushes her chair out and for a moment Alice thinks that she’s going to get up, but she doesn’t. All she has done is put some space between the front of her body and the table, as if opening up access for Alice. 

Alice takes the chance and moves her hand to Dee’s thigh. Just a gentle, reassuring touch, for now. 

“He cheated on me. I found out just before he died.” 

Alice moves to caress Dee now. She looks up, hopeful. Dee’s composure seems to break at the look because Alice can feel how Dee’s muscles relax under her touch. She shifts in her chair, opening her thighs to alice. 

“So you feel betrayed,” Alice suggests, inching her caressing up Dee’s thigh. 

“No,” Dee breathes, “I feel freed.”

Alice leans forward and kisses her. The scent of Silvo blankets her nostrils at the same time as Dee’s lips covering hers. She turns her palm against Dee’s clothed pussy and rubs, her left hand drawing up Dee’s side, over her shoulders and cupping the side of her neck to deepen the kiss. 

Dee gets up suddenly, moving with such erratic speed that she jostles the table and all of the cutlery clang together in a brilliant orchestra, and without a moment to spare, Alice has stood up too and is pulling Dee towards her. She sits on the table and lets Dee fit in between her legs, her right hand still sliding between Dee’s labia pressed by her black skin tight pants. Dee groans into Alice’s mouth, breaking off only to pull off the large cream sweater she was wearing along with the singlet underneath. Alice’s left hand plucks the hook of Dee’s bra off with ease and the plain cotton bra falls off her body, unwanted. 

Dee breaks from kissing Alice on the lips, moving to Alice’s collarbones exposed by the V in her long sleeved shirt. Between kisses, she heaves, “I thought… For months I thought…” She pulls away, her hands on Alice’s waist, Alice’s fingers over Dee’s damp crotch. “I was trying to convince myself that you were casting a spell on me because this seemed... impossible.”

“Why would you think that?” Alice implores her. 

Dee crosses her arms over her breasts. “Because I never thought that you could ever love me… after all that I’ve done.”

“Dee,” Alice coos, tugging at Dee’s hips to pull her close again. “Dee. How can I not love you? You have raised Kessa and Mart--Geoff into two beautiful creatures.”

Dee hangs her head, her shoulders curling like she thinks she ought to walk away, but the warmth that Alice offers is too irresistible. “But I’ve killed your kind. I blocked Kessa and Geoff’s powers. I lied to them. I tried to kill  _ you _ .”

Alice pushes off the table and embraces Dee. She fits her chin over Dee’s shoulder, into the crook of her neck, and holds her as tears start to spill. “If my flaw is loving you, I would do nothing to fix it.”

**Author's Note:**

> i had a raunchier last chapter to add which i may do later if there's interest for it. hope you like it ^_^


End file.
